Toddlers' Adjustment to Out-of-home Care

Author(s):

Nina Hover-ReisnerMichael WiningerAntonia FunderMaria Fürstaller Tina Eckstein

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Research Workshop

Session Information

14 SES 04, Toddlers' and Families' Adjustment to Homecare and Out-of-Home Child Care Settings

Workshop

Time:

2009-09-28

16:00-17:30

Room:

JUR, HS 10

Chair:

Lisbeth Åberg-Bengtsson

Contribution

European and American scientists researching within early educational science as well as developmental psychology agree with the assumption, that adjustment to day care is a crucial developmental step for young children. Nevertheless this transition period has received little research attention, and there is only restricted research evidence about the factors which facilitate toddlers’ successful transition from sole maternal to non-maternal day care and education. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Department of Education and Human Development (“Psychoanalyses in Education”) and the Department of Developmental Psychology in Vienna are engaged in a research project focussing toddlers’ adjustment to nursery care. The project is chaired by Ao. Univ.Prof. Dr. Wilfried Datler und Univ.Prof. DDr. Lieselotte Ahnert, funded by the „Fond zur Förderung wissenschaftlicher Forschung / FWF“ and is designed and financed for three years (2007-2010). To create more awareness of toddlers’ reactions to early care, of their patterns of behaviour change over the first months and to identify factors having an impact on entering day care, a multi-method-design according to quantitative as well as qualitative research tradition was designed. Results using psychoanalytic methods of observation developed at the Tavistock Center (London) are triangulated with data of quantitative research instruments according to educational and developmental research traditions to gain a transparent, complex and multidimensional insight into the toddlers’ initial reactions and their behaviour change during day care entry. In the first part of our presentation (a) the design and the research questions of the project “Toddlers’ adjustment of out of home care / Wiener Kinderkrippenstudie” will be sketched. In the second part (b) we will present the quantitative and qualitative research instruments used to study the phenomena “day care entry” and discuss epistemological positions underlying these specific research instruments. In which way the methods and results can be triangulated to create a transparent, complex and multidimensional insight into the object of research will be under consideration. According to the European discussion concerning quality of early day care as well as early education processes, we will discuss the results of measuring center quality in the projekt and compare them with the findings obtained using Participant Observations according to the Tavistock Model in the third part (c) of the research workshop.

Method

On the one hand, quantitative instruments are selected to measure • “centre quality” using the ITERS/KRIPS-R (Tietze et al 2005), • “caregiver quality” using a german vision of the CIS (Arnett 1989), • “quality of interactions” between children and preschool-teachers as well as “emotional well-beeing, interest and social involvement” using an instrument to analyse video-taped observations (Ereky-Stevens et al 2008), • “temperamental differences in responsitivity to novelty” using TTS (Fullard et al 1984), • “child-caregiver attachment” using AQS (Waters et al 1985), • “development of the children” using Kuno Bellers Entwicklungstabellen (Beller 2005), • “level of children’s distress” sampling and analysing cortisol levels within child’s saliva (Watamura et al 2003) and • “social-emotional adjustment” using the german version of the CBCL (Achenbach et al 1987); additional a qualitative instrument using a psychoanalytic method of observation (Lazar 2000) is carried out to focus the “emotional communications” of the toddlers.

Expected Outcomes

Results using the methods presented above will be discussed focussing the data of one of the hundred children who were investigated in the context of the research project “Toddlers’ adjustment of out of home care / Wiener Kinderkrippenstudie”. After presenting the design and the research questions in part (a) of the research workshop we will present and discuss conclusions in part (b): Data generated by using both quantitative as well as qualitative research instruments will be presented exemplified by the case of a girl so called “Anna”. The data of the girl will be discussed regarding to the question, if and in what way the results of the combination of methods may converge, may complete one another or may differ with each other (Kelle 2001). In the part (c) we will focus on our results of measuring centre quality according to the current European discussions and on emotional communications.

References

Achenbach, T.M., Edelbrock, C., Howell, C.T: (1987): Empirically based assessment of the bahavioral/emotional problems of 2-3 year old children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 15 (4), 629-650 Arnett, J. (1989). Caregivers in Day-Care Centers: Does Training Matter? Journal of Applied Develop-mental Psychology 10, 541-552. Beller, E. K., Beller, S. (2005): Kuno Bellers Entwicklungstabelle. Eigenverlag Ereky Stevens, K., Fürstaller, M., Funder, A. (2008): Videoanalyse: Kodierungshandbuch. Unveröffentliches Projektmaterial der Wiener Kinderkrippenstudie. Flick, U. (2008) : Triangulation. Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften (2. Auflage) Fullard, W., McDevitt, S. C., Carey, W. B. (1984): Assessing temperament in one- to three-year-old children. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 9(2), 205-217. Kelle, U. (2001): Sociological Explanations between Micro and Macro and the Integration of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods. In: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social research 2 (1), http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs010159 Kelle, U. (2008): Die Integration qualitativer und quantitativer Methoden in der empirischen Sozialforschung: Theoretische Grundlagen und methodologische Konzepte. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften (2. Aufl.) Lazar, R. (2000): Erforschen und Erfahren: Teilnehmende Säuglingsbeobachtung. „Empathietraining“ oder empirische Forschungsmethode? In: Analytische Kinder- und Jugendlichen-Psychotherapie 31 (Heft 4), 399-417 Tashakkori, A., Teddlie, C. (Eds.) (2003): Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage Tietze, W., Bolz, M., Schlecht, D. Wellner, B. (2005): Krippen-Skala. Revidierte Fassung (KRIPS-R): Feststellung und Unterstützung pädagogischer Qualität in Krippen. Deutsche Fassung der Infant/Toddler Environment Rating-Scale – revised Edition von Thelma Harms, Debby Cryer, Richard M. Clifford. Beltz Verlag: Weinheim und Basel Trunkenpolz, K., Hover-Reisner, N. (2008): Psychoanalytische Beobachtung nach dem Tavistock-Konzept als Forschungsinstrument. An Application of Infant Observation. Kommentierte Bibliographie. https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/detail_object/o:616?tab=7 Watamura, S.E., Donazella, B., Alwin, J., Gunnar, M.R. (2003): Morning-to-afternoon increases in cortisol concentrations for infants and toddlers at child age: Age differences and behavioral correlates. Child Development. 74 (4), 1006-1020 Waters, E., Deane, K. G. (1985): Defining and assessing individual differences in attachment relationships: Q-methology and the organisation of behaviour in infancy and early childhood. In: I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds.): Growing points of attachment theory and research. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial No. 209, 50, 1-2, 39-40

Author Information

Nina Hover-Reisner

Universität Wien

Institut für Bildungswissenschaft

Wien

Michael Wininger

Universität Wien, Austria

Antonia Funder

Universität Wien

Institut für Bildungswissenschaft

Wien

Maria Fürstaller

Universität Wien, Austria

Tina Eckstein

Universität Wien, Austria

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